


when you say goodbye (my lungs ache filled with water)

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, Drowning, F/M, Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 14:45:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2313284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Otherwise known as the five times Fitz not knowing how to swim was merely an inconvenience and the one time it was far worse than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when you say goodbye (my lungs ache filled with water)

**Author's Note:**

> So, this has been sitting finished in my drafts for who knows how long, and now I am FINALLY publishing it, right before season two probably josses it. (literally.)

 

1.

Leopold Fitz is seven years old and already an outcast among those that are supposed to be his peers.

He’s too smart of his own good, excelling beyond anyone else. He keeps to himself, speaks in hushed tones during his classes, and is called a teacher’s pet behind his back when the other’s think that he can’t hear.

He supposes that with that in mind he should have known that when the other kids started to actually pay attention to him it wasn’t good news.

There’s a little pond behind the school yard, it’s more like a lagoon, always smelling awful. Some kids like the play back there after lessons skipping stone on the water’s surface and trying to catch toads in their hands.

When one of the boys invites Leo to join them, he thinks its a great honor, thinks that he might actually be able to make friends, that he might be able to fit in.

It is only when Leo shows up there that he realizes what they planned instead.

“If he’s a witch, he’ll sink,” one of the boys say, pushing Leo towards the center of the group, while the other boys tug off his backpack and jacket, pushing him towards the water.

“I’m not a witch,” Leo states, because that’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard. He doesn’t even know where to begin to point out to them how wrong they are, but he imagines a few good starting points - like the fact that witches don’t exist and even if they did he would be a wizard not a witch.

“That’s exactly what a witch would say,” the other kids retort.

He can’t fight off all of them, he’s still little and there’s a whole group of them. Even as he plants his feet he knows that it’s useless.

And soon enough they’ve got him in the little pond, pushing him under so that his lungs fill with murky water as he struggles to get free.

It eventually stops, the hands pushing him under move away and instead an arm goes around his chest pulling him from the water and carrying him back to the shore.

The pond’s not even that deep, he could have stood up in it and kept his head above the water has his legs not been shaking. But sitting there on the shore, dripping wet and shaking from both cold and fear that pond could have been an ocean.

The teacher that pulled him out keeps asking if he’s alright, trying to get him to breath or give any sort of answer, but he just tugs his soggy jumper tighter around his body refusing to cry.

They call his mother and make her come pick him up from the school’s office.

Later when they’re eating dinner she asks him plenty of questions like “has this happened before,” and “do you want to look for a new school?” Most of which he answers with a nod or a shake of his head, staring down at his food wishing he could shrink to the size of a bug and escape her worried looks.

Eventually she must realize his methods for she lets out a sigh and asks one final question, “how would you feel if I signed you up for swimming lessons?”

Leo knows why she’s saying this, he’s seven not stupid, and color rises to his cheeks at the reminder of the fear he felt when he thought he was going to drown in a pond only two feet deep.

“Please, no,” he answers vocally this time, ducking his head.

The topic is never brought up again.

 

2.

They had spent the last four hours in the lab, three before that taking their final examines, and about a week before that locked in the library studying.

A part of him was still running on post-finals blitz, and Fitz feels like he could take on the world.

That is assuming the world was completely landlocked, involved a bed the size of Spain and didn't feature a shirtless Jemma Simmons who smiled at him like there was nothing wrong.

Honestly, all Leo had wanted to do was go back to his dorm room and sleep for the next eight years, or at least the next eight hours. Except Simmons had had a very different idea, she seems to think that some celebration is in order of them finishing their final, and only, year at the academy.

Her form of celebration apparently involves sneaking into the academy’s pool after hours and taking a midnight dip.

“Simmons, I’m tired,” he whines, hoping she would give in and let them go back to their rooms, but when she looks at him with those wide eyes and flashes him a sweet smile it’s not like he could really refuse her. So he lets himself being dragged along after her.

“Sleep is for the weak,” she teases.

“Yes, sleep is for the week,” he mumbles, but she either doesn’t catch his pun or doesn’t care, because she’s not deterred from her plan in the slightest.

Even the locked door which should have normally discouraged Miss Goody-Two-Shoes poses no challenge as Simmons proudly whips out a key card for the door, that he only spends a moment wondering where she got it from.

The pool room is empty, as to be expecting seeing that it is nearing two in the morning. Though the water of the pool seems no less ominous, in fact it seems a shade darker than usual, not that Leo frequents the pool.

He squints down at the water with a frown willing it to suddenly evaporate through his non-existent psychic powers, without any success.

Eyes lifting up from the water, he opens his mouth to tell Simmons that he can’t do swim, only to stop as he watches her shuck off her top. Leaving her standing before him in nothing, but her pants and a pale pink bra.

 Leo had spent a few brief, very private moments, imaging what his best friend might look like without her shirt, but it was nothing to seeing it in the flesh.

Heat rose up onto his cheeks, though he could not tear his eyes away from her, “what are you doing,” Leo asks, his tone bordering on franticness.

“Taking off my shirt,” she states the fact simply, “do you have an idea what chlorine would do to this material?”

“Oh right, yeah, that makes sense,” Leo babbles, “I should have thought of that.”

"Come on then," she says excitedly, "celebratory swim!"

“I can't," he starts, only to stop as she shimmies out of her slacks, everything turning out a lot better that he had ever imagined.

"Oh Fitz, you're not embarrassed are you," Simmons asks, crossing her arms over her chest and shooting him a little smirk.

Normally he would have strongly objected to that sort of suggestion, but embarrassment over his lack of swim trunks would probably have been easier than explaining why he wasn't willing to hop in the water with him.

He remains silent, instead watching as Simmons hops into the water. She looks graceful, natural, like a mermaid or something. She’s a natural in the water, quite like a fish, whereas he is the exact opposite.

"It's not even cold," Simmons says before gathering her hands together to grab some water and toss it at him that he flinches back from instinctively.

"We shouldn't be back here," he states, “we could get in trouble.”

“I know, I know,” she agrees with him, before ducking under the water, causing him to panic briefly until her head pokes above the water and she splashes water at him again. “but it’s so fun! I can’t help it! You know you want to join me!”

And oh, he does, because Leo has been awkwardly dancing around his feelings for his friend this whole year, and getting in the water right now could be exactly what led to him finally admitting those things.

Except, the idea of getting in that pool reminds him too much of a little kid in a knit jumper being pushed into a pond, so instead he pulls his arms tightly around himself and says, “you have fun, I’ll stand guard in case somebody comes by.”

“Oh Fitz! You’re no fun!”

 

3.

He’s going to fail his field exam.

Plain and simple, his failure was a fact.

Admitting that to himself should probably feel a lot more disappointing than it does, but honestly, Leo couldn’t seem to care less at this exact moment.

It’s not like he wanted to go out into the field anyways, he quite liked his laboratory where he could tinker in peace. Taking their field exams had been Simmons’ idea, an idea he had attempted to persuade her from and failed on multiple accounts.

They had been under no illusions that this test would be easy and Leo had been dragged enough midnight study sessions reminisce of their academy days that he knew all the skills necessary to pass the field exam.

Though now after breezing through the written part of the examination he was faced with something a bit more challenging.

“The topics you are tested on in the field exam are situations that SHIELD has determined to be possible life threatening situations that could occur out in the field,” the woman proctoring the field exam explains when he refuses to complete the next part of the exam.

“Not knowing how to swim won’t kill me,” Leo objects, “it’s not like Hydra is going to push me into a pool and demand that I either demonstrate a proper butterfly stroke or they’ll shoot me.”

“They might,” she insists, “the situations that could occur out in the field cannot be predicted, simply put one must expect the unexpected.”

He groans, having heard those exact words too many times to count as it had gotten closer and closer to the date of his field exam. Simmons in particular had acted as if those words were tattooed on her flesh, preparing for every hypothetical situation she could.

“Perhaps you should reconsider if you really wish to go out into the field,” the proctor says with a little smile, like she’s so far superior to him.

“You’re right, I don’t want to go into the field,” he says after a moment’s pause, noting only a hint of surprise in the other agent’s face - apparently not too many people walked out of their field exams without looking back.

He isn’t surprised in the slightest when his exam results come in, especially seeing as he walked out of the room without completing a third of the examination. Still, looking at those red block letters that serve as his verdict, he feels the barest hint of regret.

Though that is only because this is the first test Leopold Fitz has ever failed.

He’s tossed between wanting to frame it and wanting to burn it.

He doesn’t end up getting time to decided, for not a moment later Simmons shows up at his door, her own disappointment clear. For a second he feels truly bad and angry, because she wanted this, she deserved this.

Her smile is weak, but she holds up an already opened bottle of whiskey and says, “mind if I come in,” and he can’t turn her away.

They pretend that they’re not talking about the field exams for the first twenty minutes.

Simmons rambles on about a chemical compound that she’s just stabilized and he nods along taking generous gulps from the bottle.

Then, there’s a moment of silence before it happens, where Simmons rubs at her neck sheepishly and finally mentions what has so clearly been on her mind.

“The proctor said I was good at knowing what to do in theory,” she says frowning, “but terrible when it came to execution. I’m not surprised, just disappointed.”

“Screw them,” he says, finding that he means it, “we’re too good for them.”

“It would have been fun to be in the field though,” Simmons laments, “sort of like James Bond.”

“You’re too pretty to be James Bond,” Leo mumbles.

“Ugh Fitz,” she giggles pushing at him playfully, “don’t tease me! I was being serious!”

He wants to says that he was being serious a well, but he finds it too hard to admit his feelings now, even the buzz of alcohol won’t help that.

“What did they say about yours,” she asks after a moment longer.

For a second, he pauses unsure what she means, before it clicks, they’re back to talking about the field exams. He tries to shrug his shoulder and let it drop, but Simmons pokes and prods at him until he has to speak up in order to get her to stop.  

“Ah, you know, the same sort of thing,” Leo says dismissively, unwilling to tell her that he walked out of the exam, not when she’s looking at him with that sad look on her face, “that I would have been rubbish in the field.”

 

4.

He would have jumped for her.

He had the formula in one hand, a parachute over his shoulder.

He would have done it, he had fully intended to do it.

He would have done anything to save her.

It hadn’t crossed his mind about what actually thought of what would have happened after he got a hold of her. Leo didn't plan that far ahead. Instead, all he could think about was Simmons falling through the sky, dying, and the cure that he held tightly between his fingers.

With a parachute slowing down their inevitable descent into the middle of the ocean, they still would have eventually met the water.

Somehow Leo he reckons that sacrificing himself to the sea in order to save the most important person in the whole of human existence would have been worth it.

More than worth it.

Leo can’t catch his breath again until she’s safe and sound, back on the plane where she belongs, his hands are still shaking, so he tucks them into his pockets and tries to act nonchalant, tries to act like he’s not jealous of Ward being all perfect and saving Simmons.

“I would have done it,” he says later, trying to put his feelings into words, trying to explain just how much she means to him.

“I know,” she replies in return.

Well he supposes that that ought to count for something.

He spends the next few nights rolling her words around in his head, “you’re the hero,” until he’s able to sleep easier and not dream of people falling out of planes and sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

 

5.

They’re staying at a hotel in the middle of nowhere after his entire world has been turned upside down and it’s getting harder and harder to stay grounded. He’s not sure what to feel anymore, numbness seems to grow at the edges, but there’s anger there too and a fierce determination not to believe in what is so clearly right before his eyes.

He just wishes he could close his eyes and have things to back to how they were weeks before, when everybody was back on the Bus together play board games and hoarding bowls of popcorn.

His feet make lazy circles in the water, like a bit of poetic irony that he might have been able to reflect upon later in another life.

At some point in the evening, in an attempt to relieve some of the obvious tension Jemma and Skye had elected to start swimming, and he watches them now playing back and forth in the water, jumping slightly every time he manages to get caught in the cross fire.

“You should just come in and join us,” one of the girls coo.

“The water’s not _that_ cold,” the other insists.

“No thank you,” he replies just a bit too quickly, but before they can make curious faces or ask why he just smiles and says, “unlike you two I would prefer not to look like a winkled old hag.”

He supposes the next splash is one that he very much deserved.

 

\+ 1

Not knowing how to swim has never been anything more than an inconvenience, something that only bothered him once in a blue moon, but then again, he had never expected that his final moments involve being ejected out of a plane in a medical pod sinking to the bottom of the ocean.  

“I think I can see the surface,” Jemma says, her eyes are still wet from crying, but she’s moved from giving up to trying to find a solution to get them out of there, the current solution seems to involve her squinting out of the windows at the water around them and pretending she see more than just the crushing blackness.

For all he knows she might see more.

It seems almost trivial that this is going to be the obstacle in the way of their escape, something that had never been more than a minor inconvenience would be the thing that finally killed him.

If he had known that this was where he was going to die, at the bottom of an ocean, being food for the fishes he might have actually bothered to learn to swim before.

But it’s too late now and they’re trapped down here with a limited air supply.

The least he can do is find a way to save her.

“That’s why you’re taking it. You’re a better swimmer, anyway."

 


End file.
